While literature on categories has recently turned attention to how organizations can mitigate the “illegitimacy discount” (Zuckerman, 1999) of category spanning, most empirical studies have tested this effect in the context of a market-maker audience. This paper contributes to the scholarly debate by further unpacking the conditions in which a market-taker conservative audience can reward category spanning and the resulting hybrid products. By problematizing the relationship between degrees of categorical contrast and categorical features, we hypothesize that a conservative audience can positively reward organizations that blend the features of two high-contrast categories when the combined entity preserves the core features of the category that reflects conservative audience expectations while hybridizing peripheral attributes. Furthermore, we introduce the paradox of “strategic conventionality”: while producers strategically increase the conventionality (Durand & Kremp, 2016) of hybrid products to attract attention, external audiences penalize highly conventional hybrids based on assessments of perceived inauthenticity (Carroll & Wheaton, 2009). We develop our context- specific hypotheses in the Italian opera sector based on an original panel data of opera houses’ programming decisions.

While literature on categories has recently turned attention to how organizations can mitigate the “illegitimacy discount” (Zuckerman, 1999) of category spanning, most empirical studies have tested this effect in the context of a market-maker audience. This paper contributes to the scholarly debate by further unpacking the conditions in which a market-taker conservative audience can reward category spanning and the resulting hybrid products. By problematizing the relationship between degrees of categorical contrast and categorical features, we hypothesize that a conservative audience can positively reward organizations that blend the features of two high-contrast categories when the combined entity preserves the core features of the category that reflects conservative audience expectations while hybridizing peripheral attributes. Furthermore, we introduce the paradox of “strategic conventionality”: while producers strategically increase the conventionality (Durand & Kremp, 2016) of hybrid products to attract attention, external audiences penalize highly conventional hybrids based on assessments of perceived inauthenticity (Carroll & Wheaton, 2009). We develop our context- specific hypotheses in the Italian opera sector based on an original panel data of opera houses’ programming decisions.